A new steam restoration group has purchased former Chesapeake & Ohio Class J3a 4-8-4 passenger locomotive No. 614 (Lima Locomotive Works, 1948) and plans to return it to operating condition.
RJD America LLC, a group of railroaders and businessmen with ties to the engine, has completed the purchase from American Freedom Train Foundation, Inc., according to Jason Johnson, RJD general manager and communications director. It will move to Strasburg Rail Road’s shop in Pennsylvania for overhaul early next year, he said.
The acquisition and restoration are fully funded, he said, meaning that its financing skips a time-honored cornerstone of many such projects, a fundraising campaign. “It’s being done with private funds, so we don’t have to rely on donations, [contributions from] railfans, or grants,” he told Trains News Wire. “We’ve secured all the money and we have a signed agreement with Strasburg Rail Road Mechanical Services.”
“Unless we sell a [promotional] T-shirt, the first time we’ll ask for money is when we sell tickets [to ride],” he said.
He declined to disclose the cost of restoration or to name other principals in RJD, citing sensitivity with their current positions in the railroad industry. The group doesn’t have a headquarters yet, maintaining a mailing address in Denville, N.J. While it was founded to restore the 614, Johnson said the group later may take on other tasks. A licensed locomotive engineer, he also serves as general manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad T1 Trust.
While steam-locomotive restorations are chronically subject to delay, he nevertheless said that RJD is “hoping for [completion in] a 24-month range, with full-time shop forces” devoting 40 hours a week to the project. An RJD inspector will be at Strasburg, Johnson said, “two or three days a week to oversee the work.”
RJD is confident of success, he said, because of having “competent [full-time] machinists and welders working on it, in an indoor facility. Nothing against volunteers, but there’s a big difference in the speed with which a project can be done.”
No. 614 was one of the last commercially built mainline steam locomotives in America and is among a handful of remaining high-speed 4-8-4 passenger engines to be equipped with roller bearings, a late-steam-era labor- and maintenance-saving feature. With its 3,000 route-miles throughout the Southeast, C&O opted to name its 12-member fleet of 4-8-4 engines the “Greenbrier” class, rather than the more common “Northern,” applied because the Northern Pacific Railway in 1926 became the first railroad to adopt the type.
Built to pull C&O’s premier trains such as The George Washington and The Sportsman between Washington and Cincinnati, the engine was retired in the early 1950s. Following several years of static display at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, it was restored to lead Chessie System’s Chessie Safety Express in 1980-81, running systemwide from St. Louis to Miami.
From 1996 to 1998, it famously ran a series of excursions over NJ Transit between the commuter agency’s former-Lackawanna Hoboken, N.J., Terminal and Port Jervis, N.Y. During those trips, it operated at speeds of 70 mph or more. No. 614 was last fired in 2001, at an NJ Transit shop.
It is currently on display at the C&O Railway Heritage Center in Clifton Forge, Va., the museum, archives, and headquarters of the Chesapeake & Ohio Historical Society. It wears a coat of non-historic green paint from the proposed but canceled Greenbrier Presidential Express project once promoted by commodities broker and longtime steam operator Ross E. Rowland, Jr. Founder and CEO of American Freedom Train Foundation, Rowland had championed and operated other corporately sponsored steam-powered excursions, including the Golden Spike Centennial Limited in 1969 and the American Freedom Train in 1975-76.
Johnson said Rowland’s ownership of, and involvement with, C&O 614 ended when RJD completed the purchase.
At Strasburg, he said, mechanical work and recertification will include a federally mandated 1,472-day boiler inspection, typical firebox work, and “a full wheels-off restoration” that will involve “new tires, a full frame inspection, bearings, brake rigging, and spring rigging.”
“It had a lot of work in the ’80s and ’90s, so it’s in pretty good shape,” Johnson said. “We’ve ultrasounded hundreds of locations [on the boiler and firebox].”
As to where the engine will run, he said “we have received several offers” from railroads, “some of them surprising.” He added, “We haven’t reached out to anybody; it’s all been railroads coming to us.”
No. 614 has an operating range of 300 miles, Johnson said, because it carries an auxiliary tender. The cistern in its original tender was removed to provide space for 50 tons of coal, with the auxiliary tender holding 14,000 gallons of water.
In a prepared RJD statement, Johnson called No. 614 “a treasured part of national history, and we are privileged to become its caretakers. Reviving [it] goes beyond restoring machinery; it’s about reigniting the magic of steam railroading for today’s and tomorrow’s enthusiasts.”
The statement added this note from Rowland: “We are extremely pleased that our iconic locomotive is now in the very capable hands of RJD America LLC, where she will receive the excellent care she deserves as America’s last commercially built mainline steam locomotive. . . . She will get a thorough and timely return to service where she can again bring the magic of steam to the public wherever she runs. We look forward to being trackside to welcome the 614 back to active service soon.”
Info and future announcements will be available at co614.com.
CSX should embrace this effort. Maybe they will.